WIZARD: How did you feel about the Watchmen film?
GRANT MORRISON: I wished that they had turned it into a 12-part HBO miniseries and recreated every detail.
How did you feel about the new ending?
MORRISON: I was fine with it, until I realized it kind of destroys the original ending where the stupidest guy in the world picks up Rorschach's diary and wrecks the plan of the smartest man in the world. In the graphic novel, you know Ozymandias will fail. That's the horrible truth that lies in wait beyond the back cover. Veidt tries to save the world and does all these terrible things but we already know Rorschach's journal has to be found so that we can flip back to the beginning of the book's circular structure and begin reading again, this time with the horrible realization that it's actually Seymour and everyone else who's reading. The other problem is at the end of the movie, where we're told that world peace hinges on the belief that Dr. Manhattan is still out there to wreak havoc...but that's not true. Adrian Veidt had duplicated the destructive power of Dr. Manhattan, so you don't need the original anymore. Veidt can press a button and obliterate any city using Dr. Manhattan's powers. So Veidt becomes the great dictator in [the film] version, which is the opposite of the downbeat ending of the book.
Morrison: Watchmen is the most perfectly constructed story you could find–turn it around at any angle, and it reflects itself–but my problem with it has always been the same. The basic story hinges on an illogical, unconvincing scheme to save the world. If Ozymandias is the smartest guy in the world, why does he have to kill millions of people, including the world's most radical and inventive artists, to execute a ludicrous and ill-considered plan that could only go wrong? All he has to do at the first meeting of the Crimebusters is to say to Dr. Manhattan, "Alright, I'm the smartest, richest guy in the world [and] you're the most powerful guy on the planet, let's get together and save the world. Here's the first thing you do: duplicate yourself into a hundred thousand Dr. Manhattans, go to every single nuclear reactor and nuclear missile site and turn the weapons into gas...and then we can start negotiating." [Laughs]. Ozymandias could have saved the world...in issue two. He would know, as we readers do, that Manhattan tends to do what he's told.
WIZARD:You’ve got experience as a Hollywood screenwriter. From a visual standpoint, do you think audiences would have taken the squid seriously?
MORRISON: The squid, the tachyon cannons, the inter-dimensional research, the cloned psychic's brain are all elements of the story which play against its perceived "realism" I suppose, but I quite like the outrageous-ness of it. Veidt being the most shatteringly insane, deluded character in the whole thing might be the only way to reconcile it but the squid's more in line with the practical joke element. I think they could have done something with the squid, and the whole "This Island Earth" idea of the artists and architects on the island. But that brings me back to my original problem with the basic idea. Why didn't he take all the greatest architects, musicians, writers and artists and work with them to envision a new plan for society instead of killing them?
Power corrupts I guess, and stupefies as well. [Laughs].
